Hillary Clinton’s refusal to prosecute Boko Haram as an official terrorist group has had disastrous consequences on the region, according to Reuters.

Reuters was given access to the Nigerian army on the ground as it seeks to reimpose order in Borno after seven years of dominance by Boko Haram, one of the world’s deadliest Islamist groups and a major challenge to a government also grappling with an economic crisis caused by plunging oil prices.

As the first international reporting team to travel through the area by road since Boko Haram was pushed back, Reuters was able to see the devastation caused by the group. Roads are highly dangerous, no food is grown in the fields, and people are still trickling out of their hiding places in the bush.

The military campaign has curbed an insurgency that has killed at least 15,000 people since 2009 but in a new phase of the conflict, the army now finds itself facing small groups of guerrillas operating in the sparsely populated, wooded terrain.

More than one million schoolchildren were displaced from school amid thousands of school closures in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Those school closures were due to Boko Haram wars.